ADSL over PPTP problems in Austria

Nearly perfect, but there is a little problem for us ADSL users in Austria.
Here in our country ADSL is tunneled over PPTP and there are a lot of internet service providers, which cut the connection automatically after 24 hours or even 8 hours. The problem is, that tomato doesn't recognize this cut and doesn't go online again by itself. The webinterface still says "connected" - but that's not true. It's only true, that it's connected with the ADSL Modem which is also the PPTP server / gateway - but not connected to the internet. We have to click on disconnect and connect to connect again
- but that's only possible from the lan side. Another option is to reboot the router, but only possible if on-site.

Can you plese fix this, that tomato will recognize such connection losses and connect automatically to the internet again?

I hope this description is comprehensible? Or maybe you already know of this problem? I know only our country Austria, where ADSL is tunneled over PPTP but maybe also users from other countries with the same technologie have the same problem.

If I turn off the modem or plug out the network cable from the wan side, tomato recognizes the connection loss and tries to re-connect. That works perfect.

But if I plug out the phone line from the modem or there was a forced connection drop from the internet service provider, tomato doesn't recognize it. Thats the problem.

Can you please, please fix this? A whole country would thank you a lot!

thanks for you help, but I already had set the "Connect Mode" to "Keep Alive" and the "Redial Interval" is set to 30 seconds. That are also the default settings.

The redial works correct, when I plug out the network cable to the modem or power off the modem, like I described.

But there is no redial, when I plug out and in again the phone line from the modem. Tomato even doesn't recognize, that there was a connection loss. In the webinterface it still says "Connected" but that's not correct. I also did wait for about 5 minutes, but the router didn't reconnect, because it thinks, that it is still connected. Also no entries in the syslog.

Maybe the check routine for the wan status has to be changed for ADSL over PPTP connections?

since i use ADSL by PPPoE i have no experience with the other connection modes and so i'm not a great help with this. I think you should send Jon a email about this problem ! I think he can help you :biggrin:

i'm guessing its possible to use cron to manually force disconnect and reconnect after every 8 or 24hrs as u mentioned. unfortunately me have no experience with that someone else might wanna chip in here

Edit: btw, i believe its ur modem's fault that it doesn't report the disconnection to the router.

I'm using tomato since 0.6 and never had problem with aon. Do you have the same problem with the original firmware?
I use a wrt54 GS V 1.1 with tomato 1.3 and the following settings.
Hope this helps.
greetings
Axel

Attached Files:

I also have a GS v1.1 but with tomato 1.04.0944 (I am only a tomato since 2 days ).

No, I don't have this problem with the original Linksys firmware. It recognizes the connection loss and reconnects automatically (like it also should be in future tomato versions). But this is also a known problem in the DD-WRT firmware. Please have a look at this bugtracker entry: http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/bugtracker/view.php?id=1855 or in the DD-WRT forum there are also some threads because of this problem.

I have the same PPTP settings like you, axelc (for check interval I use 30 seconds, but thats the default value and shouldn't be a problem). I use the SpeedTouch 546 v6 Modem with newest Telekom Austria Firmware 5.3.9.2 in bridge / single user mode - not router mode.

@ der_Kief, azeari: It's not the modem's fault, because it works without problems with original Linksys firmware and also has the newest Telekom Austria firmware already on it.

Axelc, can you please try following steps? Would be very helpful:
- Open tomato's webinterface Status - Overview.
- Plug out the phone line cable (not the rj45 networking cable) from your ADSL modem (which one are you using?)
- Watch for some minutes if tomato recognizes the connection loss -> Status - Overview - Status should change from "Connected" to "Disconnected" or "Connecting". Mine still says "Connected", but that's not correct. What does your's say?
- Plug in the phone line cable again into your ADSL modem and have a look again on Status - Overview - Status. What does it now say?
- Try to visit any website in your browser. Possible?

Yes, I'm in contact with him too, but it's hard to fix this for him, because he can't test this connection type.

He also suggested a workaround with a cronjob which restarts the wan from time to time, or another better solution which tries to pings one or more targets in the internet and if there is no respond, wan service will be restarted.

tomato 1.03 or 1.04 is nearly the same (see changelog), thats the reason i'm still on 1.03

I disconnected my speedtouch modem (don't know the firmware, how can i check this?) from the phoneline and tomato shows still connecting. I think this is correct because i'm connected to the modem via pptp and not to the wan. When I reconnect it was not possible to browse a site. I had to click disconnect and then connect.
But if you take a look to my screenshoot, you will see that my wrt is since 18 days online. So in this time i had at least 18 drops from aon and no problem at all. I think there is a differents between unplug the phoneline and drop the line by aon.

The only problem I have, after a manuel disconnect and connect it takes at least 2 minutes to change the status from connecting to connected.

I'm Canadian, so I'm pinging google.ca (if this site is down, then for me there is little point to using the internet). If the ping fails, it forces a wan restart and logs it in the system log. Just add it to the crontab:

cru a WAN_RESTART "*/5 * * * * /path-to-script/auto_reconnect.sh"

It was really peeving me off when I'd be away for long periods and my internet would disconnect early on, preventing me from being able to shell home.